unfortunately i've found a small error in the results data, which combined with scheduling tonight means that I probably won't correct results/continue rollout until tomorrow night. Many apologies for the delay

The top of the list will probably look a lot like the critic's, but a big difference already is The Ooz: #10 with critics, #75 with us. Coincidentally, it is the highest ranked album on the critics list I haven't heard.

Meanwhile, we rank the Regrettes album just a little higher than the critics. It's nothing new, but our Moderately Acclaimed of the year poll clearly influences these results.

Rob wrote:The top of the list will probably look a lot like the critic's, but a big difference already is The Ooz: #10 with critics, #75 with us. Coincidentally, it is the highest ranked album on the critics list I haven't heard.

Meanwhile, we rank the Regrettes album just a little higher than the critics. It's nothing new, but our Moderately Acclaimed of the year poll clearly influences these results.

King Krule's song "Dum Surfer" was also the only song on the critics' top ten songs that didn't even make our top 100.

I'm really curious about the response to King Krule. It's not like he's in a genre we don't appreciate; what's going on to create such a divide?

I didn't get "Dum Surfer" at first but it's grown on me. His music's just kind of strange. I'm not sure how much I get it; I kind of put him in the same category as someone like Tom Waits. There's this certain level of density and oddness that makes it kind of inaccessible; but in a year where critics seemed to latch onto the accessible, how did "Dum Surfer" of all songs sneak into their top 10?

An unsentimental candor defines Out In The Storm, which is not so much a breakup album as a scathing post-mortem that leaves neither party unsullied. As Crutchfield put it in an interview, the relationship’s intermingling of the professional and the romantic meant its dissolution “rippled throughout every little corner of my life,” and Out In The Storm is a blistering, unsentimental inventory of all the places that hurt can infect.--Kyle Ryan, AV Music

There’s a line on the new Protomartyr record, Relatives In Descent, that proves that no other band can rival their ability to conjure such bleakness – but inject hope all the same. “In the old city/In abandoned shells/On a desolated edge,” croons frontman Joe Casey on ‘Night-Blooming Cereus, “amid the death of all things/Not under the scornful eye or the corporation’s hand/Only in darkness does the flower take hold/It blooms at night.” It is a stunning and vivid description of finding hope in darkness, something that stands out so brightly during the album’s pile-driving 44 minutes. Their third album, ‘The Agent Intellect’, was an assault on the senses – a relentless, gritty punk triumph that still made room for catchy hooks aplenty. ‘Relatives In Descent’, then, is the obvious sequel.--Thomas Smith, NME

After a grueling 5 years which almost seemed specifically designed to destroy her will to create, Kesha has returned with an album which proves her talent cannot be suppressed. By bucking those expectations, Kesha has made a surprisingly audacious album which far surpasses what is typically expected of the genre. The bastards who thought they could keep her down have only pushed her to do her best work yet.--Darkko, RYM

On Saturation II, Brockhampton go into depth about numerous topics that prior to their ascension hip-hop was really not discussing at great length. Using a posse-cut format that was reminiscent of Wu-Tang Clan and most notably Odd Future before them, each song on this album showcases pieces of the group functioning in syncopation with one another. Themes of the album dwell between politics, sexual identity, homosexuality, emotions, feminism, drug addiction, and hints of braggadocio peppered in that make the music lyrically both extremely forward thinking for hip-hop as well as strangely familiar. This also is evidenced in the production, with quirky, occasionally chaotic, and undeniably eclectic production that is very reminiscent of Pharrell and Odd Future's respective works but at the same time sounding uniquely futuristic. --cbthedog, RYM

The 13-songs on Arca don’t represent an about-face for Ghersi, or even a reinvention. Rather, it imagines what would happen if he intermingled the music of his past (the pop songs he made, the Schumann and Mendelssohn he studied) with the radical noise and boundary-shattering pop he’s invented as Arca. Booming organs, mournful pianos, and classical instrumentation share space with a kaleidoscope of outré production. This juxtaposition is made even more clear by his voice, which proudly wears all of its imperfections: every cough, wheeze, and difficult breath is captured. That he’s using his voice at all is, for Ghersi, an act of time-travelling in itself. He says that his relationship with his voice on this album felt like “communing with [his] teenage self again.” He combines paradoxes and contradictions to create an experience that doesn’t feel like it’s part of our space-time continuum, but a separate universe he’s making on the fly. --Kevin Lozano, Pitchfork

Perhaps with age comes an ability to separate herself from the music a little more - not in the sense of making it less heartfelt, but just a little less literal. Though only loosely sculpted, the album has a planetary theme, only directly appearing on a few tracks through imaginative storytelling and a heavier reliance on glittery-sounding synths than we’ve seen before. It does feel much more thought-out, though, as if Zauner had more deliberate intentions for how the songs would transition between each other than collecting tunes written in heats of passion and heartbreak like on Psychopomp. The result is an album that holds your attention, smoothly mixing up tempos and degrees of sadness as it goes along--Veronica Irwin, The Quietus

In considering the pain/pleasure binary, Pleasure is artfully arranged to include a number of dueling perspectives. Loud and quiet is the most obvious experiment here; at its core, this is Feist’s most stripped-down record to date — it was recorded live and you can hear an analog-tape hiss throughout. And yet, the grainy, placid “A Man Is Not His Song” ends explosively, tacking on a quickie sample of Mastodon’s galvanic “High Road” at the end. The bass-led “Century” contrasts Feist’s meaty soprano register with Jarvis Cocker’s ominous baritone and ends mid-chorus, seemingly when the track has reached its apex.--Rachel Brodsky, Paste

The title track of Hot Thoughts starts like a Kraftwerk tune: electronic drone, metronomic beats and clipped robotic vocals. Then the guitars crash in, and you're reminded almost no one engineers post-punk propulsion into precision-tuned rock-and-roll melody better than Spoon auteur Britt Daniel. Nearly 25 years in, his group has made maybe their best record yet – a line that been repeated, accurately enough, with most every record they've made.--Will Hermes, Rolling Stone

After Laughter is a record of unraveling, one that watched the fabric fall and managed to create something new from the old — in the current Paramore lineup, in guitarist Taylor York's penchant for '80s pop experimentation, in Williams' vulnerable lyricism performed in a voice outside her own, in Farro's familiarity, in their fight for compassionate reinvention. It's a record created close to death, it's a record that exists both in loss and the stage right after it. It's a miserable pop record, a complicated pop record, Paramore's first pop record. Here's hoping for many more.--Maria Sherman, NPR

"You start off as this blank sheet of paper, this innocent thing. And then life starts bending and folding, bending and folding... I'm still being bended and folded. We all are." When explaining the title of her new album to Pitchfork, Jlin suggested this process eventually makes us into a "beautiful" piece of origami. But her tracks, which she composes from beginning to end without going back to make structural revisions, emphasise the turbulent folding process over the outcome. Her unique and overwhelming new album, Black Origami, doesn't present an attractive finished form so much as an identity in the chaotic process of taking shape. --Angus Finlayson, Resident Advisor

Desire and distance, heat and cool course through Kelela’s album. It’s a digital phantasm, a matrix of synthetic sounds enfolding countless tracks of Kelela’s vocals. Yet for all its electronic metamorphoses, the goal it achieves is intimacy, as Kelela whispers and coos about all the shifting modalities of getting close to someone. She makes sure that virtuality leads back to physicality.--Jon Pareles, New York Times

This has been the year of IDLES and Brutalism - released back in March - defies all the expectations and images one might reserve for a debut album. Beneath the surface of charismatic rage and sonic gut punches there is an unparalleled level of confessional vulnerability and writerly prowess that comfortably cement it as an instant classic.

Joe Talbot, in the role of frontman, shows little mercy for the pretentious, the stupid, the self-righteous and those responsible for furthering society’s impending collapse. His writing really shines when his personal relationships are under the spotlight and when he turns his ire on himself. The album is particularly focused on Talbot making sense of the untimely death of his mother and examines grief in all its forms, whether it be sad, messy, dignified or soaked in Buckfast and pissing in kitchen sinks. Throughout Brutalism he lurches masterfully from prosaic and articulate to cruel and sarcastic when his anger flares, like a charming but intimidating drunk: “You want to be a shepherd? Well good for you. Go ahead. Your life won’t be so tepid.”--Tim Mobbs, Drowned in Sound

Party's velvet-soft sound is a bedding for a gifted weapon-of-a voice. Harding puts on so many masks throughout the album — the shriek, the sullen smoker, the concerned love — but there's something calmly self-assured behind the costume changes. She's always wearing the same shirt. As we spoke, she thought aloud that, maybe, the record is a document of self-imposed isolation in some way, a reckoning with ambition and the costs of trying deeply. Have you ever exiled yourself in order to try and be completely yourself and see what magic may come of it? Aldous Harding is all alone now, all the better to join us.--Andrew Flanagan, NPR

World Eater is a balancing act of contradictions. It runs fierce and bloodthirsty at full charge, packing a rich plethora of jittery agitations into your wounds without leaving any breathing holes, until the stress pops the staples and a frenzy of anarchic shards scatter upright at your feet. But you will not stop dancing. This is because, no matter how hard and scary Benjamin Power’s third solo album may be, it is not executed relentlessly so, electing to generously smear an abundance of peaceful elation straight on top of the chaos, allowing relief and manufacturing inspiration without abandoning any core human element. It’s never intolerable nor painful, but rather the soundtrack to a heavenly rave where we all welcome the end of the world with open arms. As much as it scrambles my thoughts and leaves my body blissfully battered, it always calls me back for a repeat, offering itself as the perfect mechanical donor for my veins, which is always a gift, and never a chore. I don’t even need to look at what’s already there, I simply place this record on top of the highest league of electro albums I’ve ever heard in my life.--WarmGunHappy, RYM

It’s no coincidence that the album’s muses are artists of an earlier generation who are now gone. As soothing to the ear as its acoustic arrangements are, Musas has an urgency of purpose about it. Lafourcade sifts the language of these enduring songs, made before she was born, like an archaeologist sifting for bone fragments. She is driven to celebrate this music, but also to learn from it, before it slips too far into the past.--Beverly Bryan, Paste

The album’s opening track, “Magnificent (She Says),” is the quintessential Elbow song, even as it quietly folds in sounds we’ve never before heard from the band; it’s lush with symphonic flourishes, mirrored elsewhere on the album with string sections and choral backings. It’s a feel-good anthem about a girl who throws her arms around the world, believing everything will be beautiful even when reality might call that into question. Optimism here is a choice, a way of viewing the world not through rose-colored glasses, but through the belief that perseverance and hopefulness are their own reward.--Josh Hurst, Slant

As Drunk reaches its woozy, downtrodden climax, a loose concept emerges. The album is a scattershot diary of Bruner's day-to-day, examined through the lens of his recreational pursuits—that is, getting fucked up. But, when Bruner's social conscience speaks up, the insights—spiced with slacker humour, free of sanctimony—are persuasive, even moreso when accompanied by an embrace of his flaws, or, in the case of "The Turn Down," a silly digression. Where guest vocalist Pharrell Williams gauges the political climate in broad, blunt strokes, Bruner observes those issues through references to Air Jordans and Captain Planet. Levity and trauma go hand-in-hand—for the sake of Bruner's sanity, they have to. "One more glass to go / where this ends we'll never know," Bruner sings on "DUI," the album's last song. The answer, after nearly an hour of tragicomic soul-searching and self-medicating, remains foggy.--Ray Philp, Resident Advisor

But what ultimately binds Washington’s work together is his spiritual approach. As with The Epic, the title of this release and of the individual pieces suggests the scope of his ambition. The concept for Harmony and the video for “Truth” make clear that Washington is framing his work so that they’re in conversation with the biggest social issues facing the world. His music is both a challenge and a balm, the starting point of a conversation and a place you can go to meditate on what’s been said. Following on its massive and sometimes unwieldy predecessor, Harmony of Difference, a brief and concentrated blast of emotion, is a great place to catch up on what Washington has to say.--Mark Richardson, Pitchfork

Modern Kosmology opens with "H>A>K" and a tension-building and almost creepy pulse. Within about a minute, the synth is accompanied by a vocal melody, acoustic drumming, and then a repeating electronic loop. The song curves and slopes gently, more cool and forbearing than bracing. It is an apt song to lead off the album because for the duration of its running time Modern Kosmology feels like a single unbroken series of shifting melodies in constant motion, its electronic and organic elements shaped, combined, and layered in a kaleidoscopic manner. It is an achievement of synthesis, cohesion, and craft.--Jordan Penney, Popmatters

In sitting down to write this piece, I've found myself sporadically needing to turn the album off because songs like "The Sound of War" and "Undercover" have hit a nerve too raw for the walk to work in the morning, or the late afternoon lull in an open plan office. When it first landed in my inbox, Sundfør's voice transported me back to that part of my twenties where I careened along, completely unmoored, through the rubble of a relationship's end. Many women will know the feeling of stepping outside and seeming to egg on the world to play a role in your self-destruction – as if jeering, 'go on, hurt me if you like, I can't feel a fucking thing'. Making it home every night after throwing my body around Brighton was like both a victory and a loss. Somehow, a good seven years since that time, Music for People in Trouble lays bare that sensation. It's like a deceptively sweet soundtrack to rock bottom.--Tshepo Mokoena, Noisey

Hope for Baker is real, and its name is God. As a queer southern Christian, Baker manages to navigate her identity and values with a sense of clarity rare in people twice her age. Her music isn’t explicitly Christian; in some ways it’s barely even religious. Nonetheless, God and faith have a powerful presence in all of her songs. “Happy to Be Here”, with references to church and “humiliating grace” is the most openly religious song on the record, but nearly every song includes some subtle address to a higher power. For some, Baker’s music can be a vital third rail for spiritual music, songs that speak to the power of faith without evangelizing. Though not for everyone, this is the kind of music that saves lives.--Colin Groundwater, PrettyMuchAmazing

Most poignant is the “in conclusion” set of demands the band used to inform the record: “an end to foreign invasions, an end to borders, the total dismantling of the prison-industrial complex,” and so on. Such enormous needs were caused by equally enormous injustices, and the heart of the listener goes out to the millions of unfairly incarcerated Americans and Canadians, as do the hearts of the band. Whether Godspeed had intended to soundtrack the burning forests and poisoned oceans, or unify humanity to save them, is unclear. At numerous times throughout Luciferian Towers, the answer is a satisfying both.--Michael Cyrs, The405

These are songs lush with detail, dotted with matter-of-factly dispensed places and proper names (Evelyn, Andrew, Mary, Haley), and yet they're also abstract enough to retain an undercurrent of mystery. "Shark Smile" paints a vivid picture of a doomed drive, but instead of indulging in road-song clichés, Lenker prefers to linger on illuminative details — "the money pile on the dashboard, fluttering" — en route to a trip's bad end. In "Watering," "Mythological Beauty" and elsewhere, Capacity's flashes of violence are rendered in bloody poetry, leaving the album's back half to do the business of healing and adjusting.--Stephen Thompson, NPR

Lust For Life is filled with the leisurely charms of someone who is in no hurry to grow old, as well as the tenacity of an artist who stubbornly refuses to forget about any of the people who have scarred her in the past. Lana Del Rey appears to be striking a delicate balance between yearning to be left alone on her private black beach, with a self-serving desire to have the eyes and ears of the world focused on her for as long as she can. But throughout this accomplished, assured new record, Lana manages to repeatedly freeze time and capture those fleeting cinematic moments that make us who we are, while reminding us of who we could be.--Erik Thompson, The Line of Best Fit

Unbeholden to the band’s existence, Painted Ruins has a cavalier quality that you’d struggle to spot in its tense forebears. Rossen and Ed Droste still spindle out riffs that crest like fractal waves, and their haunted Beach Boys melodies echo through the dense orchestrations. But where they used to overlap neat pastoral melodies until the ground felt like it was churning beneath you, the landscape here is smouldering, godforsaken and explosive, their awkwardness untamed.--Laura Snapes, The Guardian

So, I've been doing my usual year end tournament thingy and I'm toward the end. Started with 64 albums, did double elimination tournament and after 5 rounds:5-0 albums: American Dream, Masseduction4-1 albums: No Shape, Damn, World Eater, Luciferian Towers, 50 Song Memoir, The Underside Of Power, Infinite Worlds, The Queen OF Hearts, Semper Femina, Plunge

Biggest change between when I voted and now is that now American Dream is my #1 (I think I voted #5), and Semper Femina which I put at 40 or so has entered my top ten.

Across 36 minutes, Vince Staples crams slinky disclosures on class and entitlement into infectious and eccentric club bangers. He leaves us with thoughts on fame’s corrupting influence and love’s power, all from a rising rap star who understands his reach and the limits of his celebrity. Big Fish Theory is a compact rap gem for dancing to or simply sitting with, an album that is as innovative as it is accessible; if not a glimpse into the future, then it’s at least an incisive look at the present. “This is Afrofuturism y’all can keep the other shit. We’re trying to get in the MoMA not your Camry,” Vince wrote, half-joking, in a since-deleted tweet. The funny thing is, Big Fish Theory might just be equipped for both.--Sheldon Pearce, Pitchfork

Like film director Brad Anderson’s grueling 2001 psychological thriller Session 9, Science Fiction uses what seem to be found recordings of psychiatric evaluations to project the horror of hallucinatory mental illness onto the listener, while Lacey and company dive into song after song about the psychic wear of survival in tumultuous late-teens America. For a band that steers as willfully clear of media as it does, Brand New is surprisingly adept at expressing the ambient terror and mania plaguing the times. The prescience of the fears haunting Science Fiction’s characters is as unnerving as their choices.--Craig Jenkins, Vulture

Utopia starts with a kiss and erupts like a firework display. Every moment of "Arisen My Senses"—gilded strings, cooing voices, ecstatic birdsong—sparkles, an outpouring of joy we haven't heard from Björk in years. It's the first sign that her emotional landscape has shifted since Vulnicura, the 2015 album inspired by her breakup with the artist Matthew Barney. Though Utopia is something of a companion to its predecessor—both coproduced by Arca, both featuring classical instrumentation paired with glitchy beats—it's also the complete opposite. On "The Gate," she sings of how the chest wound on the cover of Vulnicura has become a channel through which to give and receive love. Heavy strings are replaced by ethereal flutes, and Björk's lyrics turn from sour and introspective to giddy and wondrous, as if embracing the new people and feelings around her. --Andrew Ryce, Resident Advisor

“No Shape” marks another shift. It was recorded over two months in Los Angeles, and produced by Blake Mills, who’s worked with Fiona Apple and the Alabama Shakes. The album is giddily ambitious, full of sunlight and unfettered rhythm; at various points, it recalls Kate Bush, Prince, and the Velvet Underground. Hadreas has always been an artist of catharsis, grasping toward and inducing spiritual and emotional release. On the new album, the release is physical, too, and the sound approaches straight-up rock. His songwriting is still disciplined but feels unrestricted now. A new arsenal of instruments—warm guitars, amphetamine-speedy strings, synths distorted into vaguely comical registers—tumble and curl through each song.--Jia Tolentino, New Yorker

Kelly Lee Owens' self-titled debut is a folk-pop album – kind of like how Arthur Russell, a longtime hero of the singer/songwriter/producer for whom she names the collection's wonderful second track, is a folk-pop artist. That is, completely and not all. Its melodies are effortless, romantic and repetitive; its atmosphere replete with pastoral open spaces and the kind of spiritual longing at the heart of human intimacy. Like many of Russell's finest labors, the 28-year-old Welsh-born Londoner's album features the hallmarks of current dance-music culture — computer, synth and drum-machine textures (or their laptop plug-in variants), an omniscient club groove fueled by occasional bass blasts — yet sounds like the work of an old soul, filled with inner truths that people operating in music and technology often choose to bypass. Which is funny, because few intertwined human undertakings are older than emotion and the dance.--Piotr Orlov, NPR

StevieFan13 wrote:Wow. Even after all that, Brand New make it in the top 25.

I can't speak for anyone else, but to me, Jesse Lacey's (admittedly horrible) actions have zero effect on how I judge his music. When it comes to evaluating his art, Lacey's moral character is as relevant to me as what his favorite breakfast cereal is.

The only exception to this I could possibly entertain is if an artist's actions directly contradicted their art. But it's not like Lacey was writing songs about why it's wrong to ask for nude pictures from underage fans. So I'll give the album a pass.

(Also, it's always seemed a little strange to me how quick certain people are to totally write off a work of art once they find out that someone of dubious morals was involved in it. A good number of people were involved in the creation of Science Fiction, why should the album's quality be tarnished just because of the actions of just one of those people?)

StevieFan13 wrote:Wow. Even after all that, Brand New make it in the top 25.

I can't speak for anyone else, but to me, Jesse Lacey's (admittedly horrible) actions have zero effect on how I judge his music. When it comes to evaluating his art, Lacey's moral character is as relevant to me as what his favorite breakfast cereal is.

The only exception to this I could possibly entertain is if an artist's actions directly contradicted their art. But it's not like Lacey was writing songs about why it's wrong to ask for nude pictures from underage fans. So I'll give the album a pass.

(Also, it's always seemed a little strange to me how quick certain people are to totally write off a work of art once they find out that someone of dubious morals was involved in it. A good number of people were involved in the creation of Science Fiction, why should the album's quality be tarnished just because of the actions of just one of those people?)

But I digress...

Eh. I guess it depends on how attached you are to the band. I was only starting to get into Brand New ("Jesus Christ" featured in a major scene of a play I worked on), so given that I had no major attachment to them and disapproved enormously of Lacey's actions, I never bothered to look further. On the other hand, I still listen to a lot of music produced by Phil Spector and we all know what he did.(Big exception: although I like his sound, I refuse on principle to listen to R. Kelly. Fuck that guy.)

Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand - Sir Duke (1976)

Elsewhere on The Navigator, Segarra weaves together tales inspired by her own life lessons learned "from coast to coast" with images of Nuyorican apartment life ("14 floors of birthing, and 14 floors of dying," Segarra sings, painting a gorgeous tenement image), refugee boat journeys, women's street survival, love messed up and selfhood reclaimed. Her characters are always in motion. The doo-wop strains that open the album put us in the alleyways where Latinx kids sang and fought for their pride in the 1950s; the ominous "Rican Beach" surveys those same neighborhoods, wrecked by urban renewal. "I've been called allegedly free," she sings in the moody "Nothing's Gonna Change That Girl." The line works as a personal testimony of a complicated life, and a statement about the realities faced by countless uprooted Americans.--Ann Powers, NPR

Visions of a Life is a phenomenal achievement. It has captured on record the thrill, angst, sadness and uncertainty of being in your twenties and not really knowing what’s going to happen or should happen. All of it is never anything less than intoxicating, heartfelt and effortless. Ultimately, the album earns the perfect score I’ve bestowed upon it. It feels like one of the most crucial, relevant, angry, cool and vibrant records of the decade. Wolf Alice, as fantastic bands tend to, have completely disregarded the idea that a second album should be difficult and turned out a genuine masterpiece.--Luke Beardsworth, Drowned in Sound

SZA deals outside of the confines of her genres, a distinction that is all but meaningless in the polygluttonous context of 2017. Her forebears are more Keyshia Cole and Mary J. Blige, who have hurt and have been fearless enough to sing about that hurt, from Blige’s heart-crushing second album My Life to Keyshia’s chart-topper “Let It Go,” around and around again. People will go to extremes to absolve themselves of judgment, whether it’s for liking something as benign as “The Bachelor” or by mining the depths of psychology to determine that breaking someone’s heart was somehow just an act of radical self-care. SZA has the grit to say that it doesn’t just feel shitty, it is shitty. She is in touch with love’s fragilities and understands that it is worth protecting, there is just a lot of tireless work to get it. The record is all the more beautiful for it.--Claire Lobenfeld, Pitchfork

If the feelings on past records could seem impenetrable or odd, the emotional chaos on Plunge is much more representative of the real spectrum of human feeling—when there's no clean line between love and disappointment, lust and hatred, mania and loneliness. "It used to bother me that violence is as intimate as love," Dreijer writes in a note on the Fever Ray website, "but I see that you have resolved that problem by dissolving the two into each other." On Plunge, sex is violence, and violence is sex, just like the sensual, bloody imagery that accompanied the album's rollout. --Andrew Ryce, Resident Advisor

Flower Boy is Tyler’s course-correction, surprisingly meditative and beautifully colored, a collage of memories and daydreams that trades bratty subversion for reflection and self-improvement. He probes the things that shaped his psyche—loneliness, isolation, and disorientation—and focuses on outgrowing friendships, balancing the pull of nostalgia and the necessity for growth. Not only is Flower Boy Tyler’s most trenchant work, it’s his most inclusive: “Find Your Wings”: The Album, gentle and liberating. “Tell these black kids they can be who they are,” he raps on “Where This Flower Blooms,” as he grows into the artist he’s always longed to be, and perhaps always was.--Sheldon Pearce, Pitchfork

The Navigator and Kelly Lee Owens got much higher than expected. Deservedly if you ask me.

On the other hand, I thought Perfume Genius was the kind of artist that would appeal greatly to this forum and would be a lock for the top 10. To see him lower than above two albums is a big surprise. Although I didn't vote for No Shape myself.

The band’s 2015 self-titled debut established its apocalyptic, gospel-industrial howl as a primal scream against systemic racial oppression, invoking slavery in all its undying forms. Underside feels like a quantum leap from that both musically and thematically, newly charged with the righteous anger of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and explosively unleashed by artists and activists who sense that this is their moment to seize. The result is a collection of songs that articulates that fury and despair with such authority, it deserves to become the soundtrack for whatever future documentary montage captures the mess of 2017. It’s galvanizing, uncompromising, and uplifting, and it should speak to everyone who still has some fight left in them.--Sean O'Neal, AVClub

Alvvays mastered darkness on their self-titled debut three years ago, and likewise, on ‘Antisocialites’ deathly black humour hungrily circles sugary pop, like a blood-sniffing shark. ‘Dreams Tonite’ touches on vaguely similar ideas to ‘Adult Diversion’ to equally acerbic effect, while ‘In Undertow’ hazes in and out of focus in a barrage of infectious melodies, while the menacing riptide rages beneath. And all the while, porous, uncontainable water metaphors flow through the gaps; a product, perhaps of growing up on an island where it was loved and feared in equal measures.

This duality is central to everything that Alvvays does. With contrasting opposites being so vital, perhaps that’s why ‘Antisocialites’ winds up as a plural, even after battling internally at every turn. Just as unique as that now-classic debut, Alvvays have inadvertently gotten their wish all the same. They’ve wound up in a league of their own.--El Hunt, DIY

A lush record that looks to the self for material, Process, true to its name, dissects aspects of Sissay’s life (fame, religion, family, and of course, love) using his trademark vulnerability as a means of analysis. Somber, but not necessarily sad, Process maps Sissay’s emotional journey by confronting his feelings head-on; like the seven stages of grief, each emotion is unpacked and experienced through stirring cries, clever meshing of classical and electronic instruments, and a personified piano. “Waves come crashing over me/I’m somewhere/An open sea,” he recounts, struggling to float against the pressures placed upon him. The water metaphors are apt for Sissay’s voice, a falsetto drenched in its own sentimentality, which decides to swim against the grain than embrace it.--Mick Jacobs, PrettyMuchAmazing

You could argue that what he has to say isn’t exactly new. He’s certainly not the first person to inform us that the planet is doomed, that the population is becoming increasingly disconnected and immune to horror, that we’re over-satiated with vapid entertainment and over-inflated with a sense of our own importance (“the homophobes, hipsters and 1% / The false feminists he’s managed to detect / Oh, who will critique them once he’s left?” ponders the social media-obsessed titular character in Thoughts of a Dying Man), that politicians are venal and self-interested, that religion is a waste of time but humanism doesn’t look too appealing either, given how stupidly humans behave. But it’s hard to think of anyone who’s done it this potently. The lyrics teem with flashes of black humour (in the post-apocalyptic world conjured in Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution, where humans are hunted down as they scavenge for food, “we’re all still pretty good at eating on the run”), while the kind of pomposity that usually accompanies grand statements such as these, replete with references to Sophocles and Dante and The Book of Revelations, is ameliorated by Tillman’s scourging self-awareness: “Oh great, that’s just what we all need – another white guy in 2017 who takes himself so goddam seriously.”--Alexis Petridis, The Guardian

By far the band's most extroverted work to date, it would nonetheless be too simplistic to assume that I See You is, therefore, the xx's "happy" album. It is every bit as emotionally complex as previous releases, at times even more so. In their depiction of romantic pursuits, the band certainly evinces a swaggering confidence and boldness here that was rarely encountered on their first two albums, which tended to recede into the background and observe from the sidelines. "I Dare You" and "Dangerous" are irresistibly flirtatious, and "Lips" brims with a breathless, taken-aback sensuality. The xx have never been strangers to the emotional power, for good or ill, of physical touch, yet here they sound more in command of that physicality than ever before. Even when Croft sings, "Here come my insecurities / I almost expect you to leave" on "Say Something Loving", it comes across more as the self-knowledge that comes with maturity and adulthood rather than total submission to one's inner demons.--Andrew Dorsett, Popmatters

Kelly Lee Owens would've been even higher if I weren't late to the party. For some odd reason, I was under the impression this was a traditional folk album; and, since I've been up to my ears in "folk" albums the past few years, I wasn't in any hurry to hear it. I definitely hadn't anticipated an album overflowing with ambient/electronic/dream pop elements. Not sure where I had the wrong impression, but I'm sure thankful for the AM forum steering me right!

I expected Pure Comedy to be very divisive, but you'd hardly say so with its current placement. I haven't made up my mind about it yet. I think a little of it at a time goes a long way, as if I'd rather listen to each song there separately (and tend to all be good), than sit through it in one sitting.

She recently said that she is at her most sincere when she is singing, which has never felt more true: this album deals with femininity in a nuanced and honest manner, with Marling never hiding behind a façade of characters or dealing in over-familiar observations. Few songwriters, let alone any still in their mid-20s, are able to illuminate such complex material with this degree of insight and personal experience. What’s more, while Short Movie felt like a minor departure, this record still manages to sound deeply connected to its predecessors.--Max Pilley, MusicOMH

given the subject matter of ““I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar,” this meta exercise becomes one of Crack-Up’s most legible and devastating emotional moments, demonstrating the chasmic difference between the wide-eyed optimism of a decade prior and Pecknold’s political and personal disillusion. This becomes more apparent on the album’s second half, particularly “Fool’s Errand” and the closing title track. Not only are they the most conventionally pleasant songs here, but they hint at Pecknold recognizing the futility of self-reliance and learning to once again embrace friendship and Fleet Foxes.--Ian Cohen, Pitchfork

In a genre beloved for its comfortable reliability, all it takes are these small but striking detours to remind us that this glorious noise is the work of human hands and the skill that move them. If there’s a story to Slowdive—the band’s return to active recording together after decades of slowly mounting critical and audience acclaim—beyond the human-interest angle of the return itself, the swerves in the songcraft tell it: This is an album as thoughtful as it is beautiful.--Sean T. Collins, Pitchfork

This record is a shimmering case study of the iron grip that melancholy has on the heavy soul that wants desperately to accept love. Beyond their meteoric guitar solos, exploding-heart drums, and silvery synths, The War on Drugs always lead us back to that familiar moment that we all know: the paralyzing convergence of passion and anxiety. This moment unfolds over the course of A Deeper Understanding and is guided by a new paradigm in the band’s collaborative powers, especially regarding the interplay of vocals, instrumental layering, and solos. As soon as the needle is dropped, we are pulled with a swift elegance back into the hazy incandescence of Adam Granduciel’s mind.--Adam Rothbarth, TinyMixTapes

Sleep Well Beast is the sound of one of the best bands of this decade pulling new sounds into their repertoire and making those sounds wholly theirs. It's difficult to deny music this well-crafted and affecting—and perhaps being able to make anything beautiful and affirming in the Trump era is notable. This is the band's best album since Boxer, and will stand as one of the year's best. --Ryan E.C. Hamm, The Independent

jamieW wrote:Kelly Lee Owens would've been even higher if I weren't late to the party. For some odd reason, I was under the impression this was a traditional folk album; and, since I've been up to my ears in "folk" albums the past few years, I wasn't in any hurry to hear it. I definitely hadn't anticipated an album overflowing with ambient/electronic/dream pop elements. Not sure where I had the wrong impression, but I'm sure thankful for the AM forum steering me right!

I absolutely thought from the artist's name and title that it was a singer-songwriter or country album at first. Then when it started showing up toward the top of electronic-leaning critics' lists, I realized I needed to hear it

Jackson wrote:I thought the King Krule album was borderline unlistenable and had no business being in near the critics' top ten, so count me among those who are happy to see it so low in this poll.

Completely agree. He can't sing for his life and the music is at best atonal, at worst off key. Horrible album.

The absurdly high placement of this album on the EOY spreadsheet - and, undoubtedly, on the potential final AM update - is a mystery on par with Amelia Earhart, as far as I'm concerned. To quote Robert Christgau's review of the Rolling Stones' Undercover: "What do people hear in this murky, overblown, incoherent piece of shit?" Admittedly, I've only listed to The Ooz twice, so maybe repeated listens will reveal, I don't know, actual songs and stuff. But right now it just seems bizarre that it's so critically revered.

By the way, I wish I had participated in this. I've been so focused on the EOY albums spreadsheet, and so busy in my offline life, that I've been distanced from everything else going on in this forum since the end of the all-time albums poll.

Lorde recognizes that a night out isn’t always about losing yourself in a sea of bottles and bodies — it’s about finding yourself, too. Without the detached coolness that characterized 2013’s Pure Heroine, Melodrama retains all the precocious smarts of its predecessor while offering a riveting, more emotional journey of self-discovery. Here, Lorde makes getting drunk and hooking up sound downright spiritual as she examines her fumbles through adulthood with enviable grace, lacerating honesty, and even humor. --Nolan Feeney, Entertainment Weekly

A Crow Looked at Me is a masterpiece in the manner of A Grief Observed and “She Will Find What is Lost”. All of these works create a special communion between creator and observer, artistic experiences that join individual circumstances of loss with whatever the listener/reader/viewer brings to the work. But these are not mere containers for our projections. They prepare us for times to weep and mourn, which will surely come. They focus us on questions about death, which as Elverum observes “is not natural", and love and life, which are natural and also real. These works of art help us to examine life and death, even as the questions wound. Lewis asks, “Come, what do we gain by evasions?” Elverum echoes, “Death is real.” --Thomas Rhett, Popmatters

DAMN. is as zealous and purposeful as it is broadly appealing. The record is rangy and radio-friendly, sacred and secular, full of evocative scene-setting and risk-taking. Kendrick’s more complex ideas get pared down without losing impact, flexed in his most digestible storytelling yet. Scripture becomes song on DAMN., where Deuteronomy and the curses of disobedience inform paranoid musings and philosophical debates. The fame monster has been eating away at his spirituality again, but this time he returns to the source: God.--Sheldon Pearce, Pitchfork

Mine:11. Offa Rex - The Queen Of HeartsThe Decemberists and Olivia Chaney playing old Celtic folk standards, what's not to love?

16. Duke Garwood - Garden Of AshesThis is bluesy and folky, seeing a theme here. This is my best Spotify Discover Weekly discovery of the year.

18. Cid Rim - MaterialAnother Spotify Discover Weekly find. It's like electronica but with jazziness to it and very crisp.

21. Game Theory - SupercalifragileNot strictly a 2017 album but first release for it, but no surprise it was underranked because of its very limited distribution and little to no marketing.

22. Dirty Projectors - Dirty ProjectorsThis one is a little more surprising that it didn't chart top 100. It's not their strongest album but good enough I would have expected name recognition to do more.

Clark recently told Buzzfeed that Masseduction asks, “What does power look like, who wields it, how do they wield it—emotionally, sexually, financially?” Exploring those balances of power gives Masseduction its inherent tension and anxiety. But it also doesn’t let instability win. The final song, “Smoking Section,” talks about going to the edge, nearly giving in to violent and dark tendencies, then deliberately taking a step back. “It’s not the end,” Clark repeats, in a weary and increasingly faded-sounding voice, as ghostly pedal steel smoke rings curl up around her. Defeated as she sounds, it’s an unmistakable declaration of power—an emotional cliffhanger that leaves the door cracked for new beginnings. Masseduction is a manual on how to go through hell and back, then emerge stronger than ever. It’s a record that wrests control from turmoil and believes that a different, better future is possible. It’s the best encapsulation of her vision to date, here fully under her control.--Annie Paleski, AVClub

But as much as the band’s fourth album, American Dream, marks a rebirth, it’s also obsessed with endings: of friendships, of love, of heroes, of a certain type of geeky fandom, of the American dream itself. These are big, serious topics for a project that essentially started as a goof, but it’s the direction Murphy has taken since Sound of Silver’s “Someone Great” combined his affection for bubbling synths with a poignancy about the fleeting nature of life. Now, as a 47-year-old father of a young child, Murphy is using his long-running affection for bygone post-punk and art-rock sounds to carry on traditions; the album includes pointed references to Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Suicide’s Alan Vega, and David Bowie, all of whom passed in the years since LCD’s last record. Whereas Murphy once took on all of these influences lightly and cleverly, they feel heavier across much of American Dream’s 70 minutes, with the lingering responsibilities of a disappearing history becoming more apparent.--Ryan Dombal, Pitchfork

Thanks notbrianeno. Great work. I also like our preferences much better than those of the critics.

My Top albums that didn't make the chart:-

15. Shannon Wright: DivisionShe has been around for some time, but despite her obvious musicianship and willingness to experiment she has never captured a significant audience. This album won't help, as with it's sense of anxious melancholy it is actually hard to listen all the way through without suffering a undesirable shift in mood. Then again how many albums punch that hard - not many.

16. James Holden and the Animal Spirits - The Animal Spirits I am surprised this one didn't make our top 100. Electronics, Jazz, Krautrock, Post-rock, and a sense of fun. An album made for AMF - or so I thought.

24. Sumie - Lost in LightChamber folk - not for everyone. The Guardian called it "oddly beautiful but wilfully wan" and gave it two stars. I can't argue with that at all. Very much mood music, but a mood I like.